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Surkhet: “A Buddha Airlines air­craft successfully conducted a Sur­khet-Kathmandu test flight on April 4,” said Binod Kumar Panta, Chief of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, Surkhet. Surkhet is the capital of Karnali province. A 47-seat aircraft will start regular flights from April 14. This is in line with the demand of the locals of Karnali province that an air-link be established with Kathmandu. RSS

Dhan Bahadur Roka, 69, has been suffering from a nerve impairment for the past 10 years. His limbs don’t function well if he doesn’t take medicine every day. He needs help moving around. His wife Lilamati Roka, 64, suffers from hypertension and gastritis. But these physical ailments of this couple from Malika rural municipality in the western hill district of Myagdi pale in comparison to another pain they have had to endure for the past 12 years.

Of their four sons, three have died abroad— two in Malaysia and one in Qatar. On March 24, the youngest, Dharma Lal, was found dead in his room in Malaysia, where he worked as a security guard. The second son, Bhakta Bahadur, had died 12 years ago in Qatar. Two years after that, the eldest son, Sama Bahadur, died in Malaysia. None of them had any serious illness.

Dhan Bahadur couldn’t control his emotions when he saw his youngest son’s body in a coffin last week. Lalamati is barely conscious with grief.

Their third son, Tham Bahadur, had come home from Malaysia on March 22, just two days before Dharma Lal breathed his last. He and Dharma Lal had gone to Malaysia within a span of seven months.

“My elder brother Bhakta Bahadur died 21 months after he went to Qatar. He had recently been married and his wife was pregnant. He couldn’t see his child. Then my eldest brother went to Malaysia. He died there,” says Tham Bahadur. “For a few years, my youngest brother, Dharma Lal, and I tried to work here in Nepal. But we eventually chose foreign employment because of the lack of decent job prospects here.”

Although Tham Bahadur and Dharma Lal worked for different companies, they saw each other every month. “Dharma Lal asked me to go home first and said he would come for Dashain. He was planning on getting married then,” laments Tham Bahadur. “I’m worried. How will I manage family expenses all by myself now?”

Dhan Bahadur and Lilamati require medication worth Rs 5,000 every month. Of their two married daughters, the younger one, Shashikala, helps with the expenses. But Tham Bahadur has the added responsibil­ity of taking care of his elder brothers’ three young children. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m alive,” he rues.

“Dharma Lal told me that he’d bring gold necklaces for his two sisters when he would come for Dashain. But he’s come home in a coffin,” says Shashikala, weeping disconsolately.

The loss of yet another son has plunged the Roka family into dire financial straits. Sri Prasad Roka, head of the Malika rural munici­pality, pledged financial help, both for the last rites and for the children’s education. Various organizations and individuals handed over Rs 30,000 to the Roka family last week to help with Dharma Lal’s last rites expenses.  

By Gopal Chhantyal | Beni

By limiting his India trip to three days, Prime Minister KP Oli has broken with the tradition of new Nepali prime ministers coming here at least for a week. Oli has tried to make the visit businesslike by wrapping up official duties in a single day. Previous visits of Nepali prime ministers generally included such ancillary tasks as observation of development projects in other parts of India, visits to religious sites, acceptance of an honorary degree from a university, etc. In fact, even Oli’s last trip to New Delhi as prime minister—from February 19-24, 2018—was twice as long as his current visit. In New Delhi, Oli and Modi will remotely inaugurate the integrated check point at Birgunj as well as lay the foundation of the Arun III hydroelectric project. There had been considerable diplomatic effort to credit the inaugurations of these projects to Sher Bahadur Deuba while he was heading the previous Nepali Congress-Maoist Center gov­ernment. Former Nepali ambassa­dor to India, Deep Kumar Upadhyay, had even tried to persuade Modi to go to Nepal, but New Delhi con­sidered such a visit inappropriate at a time when Nepal was caught up in election fever. As a result, Oli will get the credit for inaugurating these projects. Some view this as an expression of Delhi’s commitment to carry out major projects even when there is a communist govern­ment in Nepal.

Besides these, Oli and his Indian counterpart will discuss many old bilateral issues. Still, says a high-lev­el officer at the Nepali Embassy, the visit will focus exclusively on economic and development issues. Agreements are likely on, among other things, agriculture modern­ization, water transport, integrated check posts and new air routes. According to the acting ambassa­dor to India, Bharat Kumar Regmi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made preparations to make the visit ‘substantial’. He says discussions between the two prime ministers will center on issues of mutual inter­est, including implementation of past agreements.

Only a formality?

But according to Nihar R. Nayak, a research fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, over the past few decades, there has hardly been any difference between the numerous high-level visits of Nepali prime min­isters to India. “It’s the second visit of a Nepali prime minister in just seven months. Sher Bahadur Deu­ba had come here in August. Such frequent visits suggest they are no more than a formality,” says Nayak.

But, he adds, New Delhi’s ‘course correction’ is an encouraging sign. “It was during Oli’s previous term as prime minister that ties between India and Nepal had soured. This visit will re-orient bilateral relations in a positive direction.”

Oli will need economic aid from both India and China in order to implement federalism. His relations with China are already cordial. Now he is in search of better rela­tions with India. At the same time, China also wants to push trilateral relationship with India and Nepal. But it cannot make those lucrative inroads into the big Indian markets if Nepal-India ties remain patchy. China, in other words, needs Nepal’s help for the success of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Nayak speculates that Oli could have made India his first foreign destination after taking China into confidence. “It’s possi­ble that Oli will raise the issue of trilateral cooperation.”

You first

Modi had invited Oli even before Oli became the prime minister. “You first,” Oli had responded. Indeed there had been diplomatic efforts to get Modi to visit Nepal first. But with­out a plenipotentiary ambassador in India, this was always going to be a tall order. In contrast, many in New Delhi praise the active and incisive role being played by Manjeev Singh Puri, the Indian ambassador to Nepal. Puri, who enjoys special rap­port with Modi, is generally credited for salvaging New Delhi’s relations with Oli. But many here also view the left unity and Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi’s abrupt visit to Nepal as evidence of Puri’s shortcomings.

Modi last visited Nepal in 2014. There has not been a high-level visit from India to Nepal after the then Indian president Pranab Mukher­jee’s November 2016 trip. The Nepali side, as such, was eager to get Modi to Nepal first, but to no avail.

On the other hand, Modi has been successful in getting Oli to visit India before Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Nepal, and before the Nepali prime minister has had a chance to go to China. Modi rolling out the red carpet for Oli and Oli making India his maiden foreign trip show that the two prime ministers see each other as indispensable.

New dimensions

Ashok Mehta, a retired major gen­eral in the Indian Army and an old Nepal hand, reckons India will find it easy to work with the current Nepali government that is guaran­teed to survive at least the next two years. Mehta, who is wary of the practical aspects of the left unity in Nepal, also thinks Oli’s pro-China tilt will make him view Nepal-India ties differently. “Oli, nonetheless, understands Nepal’s geopolitical situation and the indispensabili­ty of India. So he’s continuing the tradition of Nepali prime ministers making India their first foreign trip”.

During every India visit of a Nepali prime minister, there is talk of strengthen­ing the historical, economic and socio-cultural ties between the two neighbors. Over the past four years, the visits of previous Prime Ministers Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ and Sher Bahadur Deuba as well as that of President Bidya Devi Bhandari all revolved around the cli­chéd ‘new dimension in Nepal-India relations’.

But the Indian intelli­gentsia and media persons have consistently pointed out the necessity of acknowledging the practical challenges inherent in Nepal-India relations. SD Muni, a professor emeritus of international relations at Jawaharlal Nehru Uni­versity, New Delhi, has repeatedly stressed the importance of timely implementation of Indian projects in Nepal.

In a recent talk-show, Muni said that although India cannot compete against China in financial terms, it should still adopt a policy of com­pleting and handing over such proj­ects on time. In the same show, Suhasini Haidar, an Indian journalist and foreign policy analyst, argued that relations between India and Nepal soured after India tried to flex its muscles.

By organizing this visit, the Indian side wants to convey that India’s relationship with PM Oli is normal. But others argue that India is once again continuing with its flawed pol­icy of providing patronage to indi­vidual leaders rather than improv­ing institutional ties.

Mutually beneficial

Whatever the case, strained ties with neighbors could pose problems for the ruling BJP in the general elections next year. As the main opposition, the Indian National Con­gress, has ramped up its criticism of Modi’s mishandling of South Asia policy, the BJP appears intent on improving neighborhood ties. For one, it does not want to be seen as ‘losing Nepal to China’.

Oli for his part seems to understand that Nepal has no option but to maintain good relations with India, so he too has embraced India’s forget-past-bitterness-and-move-ahead strategy.

In the lead up to the visit, the common feeling here in New Delhi was that ‘pro-China’ Oli may be hard to turn around, but he has certainly made the right start by making India his first foreign stop.

 BY ASHA THAPALIYA | New Delhi

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli wanted to complete the merger between CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) before he left for India on April 6 for two main reasons, those close to him say. One, he wanted to negotiate with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, in the capacity of perhaps the strongest prime minister in Nepal’s democratic history. He has not forgotten his rather forgettable first state visit to India as prime minister in February 2016, just after the lifting of the nearly five-month-long border blockade. Although the blockade had been lifted, there was still a lot of mistrust between Oli and Modi, so much so that they could not even agree on a final joint statement. Oli feels the rude behavior of the Indian establishment back then primar­ily owed to his weak position in Nepal, as he led a wobbly coalition with the (unreliable) Maoists and the (opportunis­tic) monarchists. India, in other words, could find ways to remove him from office. “It would have been a different story had he gone to India as the undisputed leader of a political party that alone enjoyed a two-third majority in the national legislature,” says a close Oli aide.

Two, Oli wanted to wrap up the formal unification pro­cess with the Maoists before embarking on his second visit to India as he was afraid that his old friends in New Delhi— and despite the blockade still he has legions of them, carefully cultivated over the years—could try to talk him out of the left merger. Many senior government officials and security types in India, and who have at one time or the other worked closely with Oli, still harbor suspicions about the democratic credentials of the Maoists and their leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Pra­chanda’. With the merger locked in, Oli would not be in the awkward position of trying to placate his suspicious Indian friends. In the event, he had to settle for the second-best option: announcement of a date of the merger. Barring a list-minute hiccup, the formal merger will be announced on April 22, the birthday of Vladimir Lenin and the day the Communist Party of Nepal was born in 1949. Among the merger issues that are yet to be resolved: whether to incor­porate ‘people’s war’ in the new party statute, distribution of portfolios at district and provincial levels and the division of seats between the two merging parties in the 299-member central committee.

“Yes, there are a few differences between us. But rest assured a formal merger will be announced on April 22,” says senior UML leader Rajan Bhattarai. “Remaining differences can be settled even after the merger.”

With the left unity now all but guaranteed, PM Oli will feel he can negotiate from a position of strength during his India trip—and the subsequent one to China.